Team de Alba has to be the worst Mgt team in North and South America. For some unknown and illogical reason, they have been operating in complete radio silence/stealth mode for about 2 years now. With no corporation presentation, no positive news releases, no promoting the stock in any way...they constantly preach they want to enhance shareholder value. Yet do nothing but BS, like this crazy buyback. Well, this deal of the century...buy at $8C and sell for $12C only seems to pay off big for de Alba's Catalyst Cap. Glad I was one of the 8% who did nothing.
The only reason I remain a stake holder in a company so poorly managed, is they apparently know they suck at running an oil company and publicly have announced they have engaged both Citi and Goldman to try and sell the company in pieces. IMO, the big prize is the 99.7% owned Puerta Bahia which has cost approx U$1Bil to build to date and they still are adding big $$ improvements to it. The port should surely sell for its cost basis, since there is nothing even close to it for sale anywhere on the globe. Their 35% interest in the Pipeline is also very profitable and should bring good $$. Then the oil company and its decent reserves should surely interest someone like Parex who already have a field they JV with FEC.
Leave out Guyana altogether as the D team (as in
de Alba) appears to have F..ked it up, like everything else.. But the remaining pieces surely should bring a very fire sale low ball price of at least U$1.5Bil. Or a 3 bagger since the current market cap is about U$1/2Bil. I do think this crazy buy back deal was to get cash starved Catalyst the $18Mil as mentioned below by Stockwatch. And I am hoping they announce they are selling some of the FEC subsidiaries by the end of the year to get Catalsyt some more $$. I think with de Alba moving to Miami and starting a Catalyst clone and Senior partner Newton Glassman gone even more stealth than FEC, that Catalyst is slowly closing its books.
The Stockwatch Energy reporter posted this last night:
"Further afield, Gabriel de Alba's Colombian oil producer, Frontera Energy Corp. (FEC), closed down 18 cents to $8.27 on 32,100 shares. It has released the preliminary results of its special buyback program. The program sent eyebrows -- and the share price -- shooting skyward when Frontera announced it in early September, saying it would buy back up to 4 per cent of its outstanding shares from shareholders at a generous price of $12 (a 59-per-cent premium to its trading price at the time). Now Frontera has revealed just how many shareholders tried to take it up on this offer. Out of 84.1 million shares outstanding, an eye-popping 77.5 million shares were tendered.
The vast majority of those shares will go back to their owners. Frontera had already set its buyback maximum at 3.37 million shares, saying it would purchase shares on a pro rata basis if the tenders exceeded the maximum. This means that shareholders can expect to receive payment for about 4 per cent of their tendered shares and get the rest back in their accounts.
This will still work out to a lovely payday for two shareholders in particular. Catalyst Capital and Gramercy Funds Management respectively own 34.7 million and 11.3 million shares of Frontera, and although they were not mentioned in today's press release, the numbers strongly suggest that every single one of their shares was tendered. Assuming that Frontera adheres to its stated proration plan, Catalyst should receive a little over $18-million for its chunk of repurchased shares, while Gramercy is looking at about $5.9-million. It need hardly be said."